Accelerating browsing by automatically inferring a user´s search goal

Discusses a novel method called `active browsing´ which increases the speed and accuracy with which a user may browse libraries for reusable software. Information inferred solely from the user´s normal actions is employed by the system to locate software items relevant to the user´s search goal. This paper describes our active browsing system and illustrates its operation with an example using typical browsing steps. An experiment, using an automated browsing agent, is described, demonstrating that active browsing accelerates searching